$15,000 reward offered for info on Penn Wood incidents

By LAURA WISELEY

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

YEADON -- The reward for information leading to the arrest of suspects in an April 18 fire at Penn Wood High School's Green Avenue campus leapfrogged to $15,000 Tuesday night after local leaders pledged their support at an informational meeting for parents and residents.

"Let the person on that (video) footage know that there's a bounty on your head," said state Rep. Ronald G. Waters, D-191, of Philadelphia, who added $5,000 to the $8,000 pledged earlier in the evening by state Sen. Anthony Hardy Williams, D-8, of Philadelphia, and the $2,000 pledged Monday by the Citizens Crime Commission and an anonymous donor. "What happened at that school is an insult to the whole community."

More than 150 people packed the auditorium at the high school's Cypress Street campus -- the temporary home to juniors and seniors displaced by last month's fire -- to voice their concerns over the incident and several related bomb threats to local leaders and officials from the William Penn School District. Among those officials fielding questions from the audience were: Lansdowne Police Chief Daniel Kortan; Darby Borough Police Chief Robert Smythe; Yeadon Police Chief Donald Molineux; school board members Diane Leahan, Marion Fitti, Louella Richardson, Robert Wright and Jennifer Hoff; Penn Wood Principal D. Brandon Cooley; and mayors Jane Young of Lansdowne, Helen Thomas of Darby Borough and Dolores Jones-Butler of Yeadon.

William Penn Superintendent Joseph Bruni started the meeting with a recap of the events surrounding the fire, including several phoned-in bomb threats in February and March; the placement of fliers threatening a bombing at the Green Avenue building in March; the April 18 fire, which was set in a hallway inside the building at 3:30 a.m.; and another bomb threat last week at the Cypress Street campus, where students from both campuses have been attending classes on a split schedule.

"Everytime we received a threat, police investigated," Bruni said. "Everytime we had an incident, bomb-sniffing dogs were brought in and students were evacuated outside the building. Since then, we've hired a private security force to monitor both campuses after our security force is gone for the day and on the weekends. We want this person to know that we are serious about resolving this."

During the often raucous meeting, parents peppered Bruni and other officials with questions about everything from why video footage of the suspect has not been released to the public, to why phone calls about the bomb evacuations were not sent out immediately, to why administrators opted to go to a split-schedule system rather than looking for another building to house students from the Green Avenue campus.

Bruni and other officials tried to answer each question, saying that video surveillance footage from the night of the fire is not clear enough to allow investigators to identify the suspect; that calls were placed during each incident to numbers connected with the district's Global Connect system; and that the time required to outfit another building with furniture, supplies and technology would be more than is available in the remainder of the school year. Other parents questioned problems that could occur with students arriving at and dismissing from the school at unusual times of the day.

"What are these children doing all afternoon?" one resident asked. "How many problems are we going to have? How many pregnancies are going to come up because of this?"

Officials encouraged parents to talk with their children, noting that the perpetrator likely told others of his activities. Williams said the suspect "could be in this room right now."

"The reward is out there," Molineux said. "It's going to take some information and some intelligence, probably from a student who may have heard something. Talk to your child, see if he or she has heard anything."

Bruni agreed.

"The person who did this knows that building," he said. "He knows where every camera is. He keeps his head down. We are dealing with a person with a very calculated plan of attack. It's very disturbing."

Anyone with information about the incidents can call the Citizens Crime Commission Tipline at 215-546-TIPS.